>>713435092Make the city properly destroyed if its 8 years later. This group is trying to drain and reclaim parts that have been lost. Maybe they have some encampments and areas they've returned power to. But there shouldn't be any splicers left from the original. As for the antagonists they should have abandoned trying to tell a second story about failed utopia's. The first game handled that theme perfectly. Re-treading the exact same territory but with Philosophy instead of Economics was stupid and sucked ass.
They should have actually explored the origins of the Sea Slugs which were always extremely weird and otherworldly. Have them be the children of some Cthulhu like entity. You could have a cult that's actually been around during the first game and earlier but has been hiding out. There's your enemies instead of just saying yeah there's still splicers left after 8 years and no outside help. You could even have a thing where characters from the BS1 era that didn't die or escape ended up joining this cult and that's how they're still around.
The first half of the game could have just been like the DLC. You're mostly fighting robots and defence systems, trying to bring parts of the city back online to get a hold of research material Tennenbaum needs. Then things go completely sideways when the cultists show up and you find out the city hasn't been abandoned at all. Basically anything would have been better than what they went with. The whole game I was just like "why hasn't this sunk yet, how are there still splicers here". It was retarded. Fixing that would have massively helped as well as going an original direction instead of just telling the failed utopia story over again. That's the main reason BS2 is forever in the shadow of BS1.